Polish perspective:

As I wrote before, the debate on Polish attitudes towards exterminated Jews is still in process. As a proof of it, I present here an article published last Friday (27.11.2009) in Rzeczpospolita newspaper. The translation is of my own to the best of my knowledge. Here's the link to the original article.

The forgotten heroes

The Jewish side starts to realize that the list of Poles, Righteous among the Nations, is not complete – the historian elaborates.


The researchers of WWII and particularly those who specialize in Polish-Jewish relations know very well the tragedy of Ciepielów. It is one of many stories that without a mythologizing and remaking could become a basis for a movie script. It is a story of a small place close to Lipsk, which (altogether 30 people) were murdered by Nazis for saving Jews.

The Kowalscy, Kosiorowie, Obuchiewicze, as well as Skoczylasy are for majority of Poles unknown till this day. They didn’t receive a medal of “Righteous among the Nations”. Who knows their story? Who knows that in the first days of December 1942, the German gendarmerie, in front of the neighbours’ eyes, murdered parents, their children, as well as the Jews that where hiding in their house? They died in torments, burnt alive in their own dwellings. The youngest child of the Obuchiewicze was 7 months. Despite of this tragedy the neighbouring villages continued to hide the ghetto escapees.

Mr. President of Republic of Poland, Lech Kaczyński awarded the members of those families with the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta after the premiere of the documentary directed by Arkadiusz Gołębiewski and Maciej Pawlicki titled “The Story of Kowalscy” in the Warsaw movie theatre “Silver Screen”. They were but the heroes of Fighting Poland, the same as generals, general commandeers of AK (underground State Army): “Grot”, “Bór”, “Niedźwiadek” and their soldiers.

“Will be executed”

After the creation of the ghettos and their closures on the fall of 1941, Germans began creating legislation that was supposed to prepare both Jews and “the Aryan side” to the approaching time of Shoah (from June 1941 on the territories occupied in 1939 by Soviets, from July 1942 in other areas). The main purpose of the notices was to spread fear among the populace living on both sides of the wall. They began to appear on the towns’ and cities’ walls, signed by gen. Hans Frank or commandants of particular regions:

1. “Jews, who without an authorization will leave the designated for them district, will be executed. The same punishment applies to those who will provide shelter to those Jews.
2. Firebrands and helpers are subject to the same punishment as the committer, a deed intended will be treated as a deed committed. In lighter cases [i.e. crimes] the sentence maybe imprisonment or heavy imprisonment.
3. The rulings will be conducted by the Specials Courts”
That’s how one of the first notices sounded like – issued on 15th of October 1941.

Those regulations were repeated both in contents and in the places where they were published. Only the penalties were harsher since the shameful law did not work – despite that Germans proved that they treat those threats seriously. Punished were also those who knew about the Jews hiding in nearby. The examples of the rulings of German courts as well as the further rulings were supposed to terrorize Poles, deprive them of the instinct to help needy ones.

Polish nation, however does not accept orders. Any confinement of freedom becomes detestable for us. It is proved by many Polish and Jewish testimonies, which were written since 1945 till this day. There is also an evidence in the documents, those of the German special courts and the Polish ones collected after the war by the General Committee for Research of Crimes against the Polish Nations (see IPN’s recent work published within the series “Who saves lives?”: “Who saves Jews in times like these?... Poles helping Jewish populace during the German occupation”, edited by Aleksandra Namysło, Warszawa 2009 [Polish only]).

According to the calculations made by dr. Wacław Zajączkowski and the prosecutor Wacław Bielawski, which are till this day verified by IPN’s historians and NSDAP archivists, Germans have murdered at least few hundred people for the very fact of hiding the Jews. Other few hundred, or maybe even thousands were sent to concentration camps or were persecuted (e.g. arrested and tortured). According to IPN’s data, until July 2009, there were 4709 records of people persecuted, which – after another phase of verification – will become a credible list of persecuted.

Complicated conditions

Long decades after the war, the only testimonies that world public opinion could hear were mainly of the saved Jews. It is understandable that their focus was the experiences of the Jewish community, i.e. the Shoah. In order to learn about a Pole that saved a Jew, that Jew had to survive the war, afterwards he had to wish to show appreciation to his saviour, and ultimately know his identity and actively appeal to award him a medal. He also had to preserve his national or religious identity and recognize Yad Vashem Institute as a natural place to testify in. I skip other issues, much more complex, as lack of consciousness of the saved ones – e.g. children – living and being brought up in post-war Poland.

Only fulfilling of all of those conditions, from which the most important one was the first one (surviving the war), allowed the YVI to award a medal. There are about 6600 of Poles from 22000 names from all over the world. The Council for Helping the Jews “Żegota” was the only organization to be awarded with this medal […]. Most of the saved, number of which after the war was about 30-50 thousands among those who were dared to break the German law and leave the ghetto, did not fulfil all the pre-conditions – for variety of reasons.




Through Jewish eyes

When reading the Jewish memoires, one can quickly notice that the perspective of constant fear and tension (observing the world from the hiding through horrified eyes) did not allow the saved ones to objectively take interest of Polish space or learning about the scale of the help provided or even understanding of the tension which accompanied the day-to-day occupation reality on “the Aryan side”. Only few could write that they were saved by dozens of people, and each one of those people, if wouldn’t appear in the right place at the right time, would cut off the link of solidarity with the hiding one.

Władysław Szpilman, whose saviour – acc. to the popular version – was a German officer, wouldn’t survive a day in Warsaw before the uprising, if he wouldn’t find friends and strangers to help him out. “I was extremely depressed, when once again the Providence sent me a salvation in the form of Mrs. Helena Lewicka, sister-in-law of Mrs. Jaworska. She has never met me before, she saw me for the first time in my life, but when she found out about my so far experiences, she at once agreed to keep me at her place.” – he recalled.

Jews didn’t meet only good Poles but also “szmalcownicy” – blackmailers, but above all fearful people – as all of us – who withstood threatening lives of their family for a life of a stranger. The state of anxiety and negative relations “behind the wall” strengthened among the refugees a negative stereotype of Poles – the issue which was discussed by Teresa Prekerowa (“The Attitude of Polish population towards the Jewish refugees from Death Camps in Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec in the light of Polish-Jewish Relations”, “Biuletyn GKBCpNP”, nr XXXV, Warsaw 1993, p. 100-114) – as the murderers, greedy on money, jewellery or even shoes, hating and being hated.

Jews saving themselves, who evaluated this way the potential saviours and their own fragile dependency from Poles, often tried to find a way to their hearts through money. It gave them a more solid guarantee of survival, and simultaneously made them less dependent. Hiding someone was a contract, although exceptional because of the potential price – human life. Jewish accounts, like diaries of Fela Fischbein, proved an often wrong presumption that Poles were conducting some sort of trade, subject of which was a needy Jew. However, they traded with their own life.

Polish side, with its argumentation, was absent from those memories (and yet Polish family had to find a secret way to find means to feed additional persons, in secret from their neighbours. Money didn’t mean that the main motive for providing shelter was lack of disinterestedness or reflex of conscience.

Understanding the Polish space was also difficult due to the lack of knowledge of Polish homes, faith and culture, and even language. As Czesław Miłosz wrote before the war, Vilna was a city of two civilizations: Polish and Jewish one. But the elite of Jewish community was speaking Russian, and the orthodox majority spoke Yiddish or Hebrew. Furthermore, pre-war Jews from Polish Silesia spoke German more frequently than Polish. Only few percent of Jews stated that Polish is their mother tongue.

Jewish community lived its own life, religiously (an independent press, theatres or schools), part of communist Jews knew only their Polish counterparts, and the neighbours' business contacts usually generated frictions, rather than mutual understanding.

It seems then that the barrier between Poles and Jews – which became extremely important during the years of occupation – did not allow both sides to reach a broader understanding. It is even more so, since the most important issue became the survival of the next minute, day or month. It was only after the shared experience of suffering allowed to relinquish old prejudices. However after the war Poles did not gain independence, and some of the Jews actively supported the new occupants, the conditions of mutual acquaintance have significantly worsened.

Jews, who did not identify themselves with Polish aspirations and sensitivity, before the war were fulfilling their aims on family, social or political grounds in the extreme conditions of the war and looked at the Aryan side with fear and almost panic. After the war, the saved ones probably did not want to remember about the trauma they were through or anything associated with the years of occupation, including Poles – the alien saviours, who were becoming more and more distant memory.

Help came from the friends

Only polonized Jews, often Roman Catholics, who had Polish friends or living before the war in Polish families, shared with Poles in the time of occupation the same amount of feeling of security.

They perfectly realized, where the help came from: “I became genuinely curious when I learnt about the planned book on Poles saving Jews” – Mrs Barbara Marlow wrote to me, referring to the book that I prepare in IPN called “Good Neighbours”. – “My father, Leon Bregman, after obtaining a diploma in Law from University of Warsaw, had had his own import company of machines and greases from England, he was also active in the Assoc. of POW, Assoc. of Jewish Participants in the Fight for Independence of Poland in Warsaw, the Board of Warsaw Fund for the Handicapped of the Polish Army and also a deputy to the City Council of Warsaw […]. My father’s brother, Aleksander Bregman, was a well-known political journalist and in September 1939 he went to Romania with Polish government, from where he obtained Romanian visas for my father and brother. They left Poland in April 1940, not for Romania but straight to Yugoslavia, where Father, the reserve officer of the Army of Poland, at once reported to the Army, and my brother obtained a postponement [from the army service] until passing the final exams. My mother and I stayed in Warsaw and together with my father’s parents we were forced to go to the Ghetto in October 1940.

You mentioned the church of All Saints, which in this time was inside the ghetto borders. I remember it very well, it was our parish church (parents, brother and me have been baptized) and also because of gardening lessons in which I participated every day for 2 years. I left the ghetto in July 1942 together with my mother. The further story requires a longer description but I will add only that we received a lot of support and help from old and new friends in next 2 years. An old friend of mine Mrs. Stanisława Wedecka was our main protector, parents of my brother’s friend from prof. Lenart, his wife and sons kept in touch with us continuously. My mother lived for 18 months with Mrs. Irena Nowodworska, Leon Nowodworski’s widow, a man who was the dean of the Attorneys’ Council and one of the leaders of National Party, as well as with priest Leon Pawlina from Caritas [after the war imprisoned and died in unclear circumstances hit by a train – added by JŻ]
Whole two years after we left the Ghetto, our helpers made it possible for us to have an almost “normal” life i.e. I could live in the city centre, go out as usual, join the Scouts and see my mother, although we didn’t live together. As a scout I fought in Warsaw Uprising. After the war we managed to flee Poland and we could reunite with Father who was stationed with II Corps in Italy. My brother, Lieutenant-observer in 300th Squadron was killed in action in July 1944”. In a great, American-Israeli documentary, which was showed recently on tvn [Polish biggest private TV station], the main character was a son of a saved Jew, who after the years of silence breaks the barrier of reluctance towards Poles and Poland and forces his family (older and younger generation) to come to the “goy” country and see if their saviours are still alive. The story ended with a happy end. Mrs Mucha and her husband were awarded a medal of the Righteous among Nations. Mrs. Marlow’s saviours didn’t receive any medal till this day. Only in the recent days, IPN received a message that Yad Vashem awarded a medal to priest Marcel Godlewski, the pastor of the Church of All Saints parish.


Nuns and intelligentsia

Jews, who had survived the war and testified to the truth, are only a fraction of those, who took a heroic decision to try to escape the ghetto (400 thousand people were living in the Warsaw ghetto, from which 25 thousand had escaped). In order for Pole to help a Jew, the latter one had to escape from the ghetto or from the transport.

In Polish accounts, the motif of helping the needy ones appear quite frequently. This individual help was placed in a broadly understood Civic Conspiracy Fight of the nation, which was supervised by Stefan and Zofia Korbońscy. Nuns played a great role. Their homes provided a shelter for thousands of children, hidden among Polish orphans.

One of those places, where both lay people and nuns worked, was the House of Small Children of priest Gabriel Piotr Baudouin, directed by dr. Maria Wierzbowska. Nun Joanna H. Lossow on the other hand, the Franciscan Servant of the Cross, the Head of the Warsaw House and since 1942 also of the Association for the Blind near Krasnystaw, counted how many homes and persons were helping Jews, e.g. injured in 1939, or later on to children: “In this time, my work was mainly based on managing the House’s errands in German offices and collecting food for Laski [a village]. And there were people to feed, since apart from the locals, there were also injured soldiers, officers and cripples from September 1939, as well as refugees from Warsaw, among whom were Jews and a quite big group of children, who in the time of war were left without any care and for whom we established a boarding school, the so called Alojzki – named after the patron of the House, in which they were put”.

Similar memories referred to Polish families in both countryside and in urban area. Mrs. Miecznikowska, Warsaw, reminisced: “First we rented out the children room to two young men – Adam Kapłański and Bronisław Lewandowski. Both were in the underground. Mr Bronisław was a musician, the author of the famous “Żoliborz March”. And so our house – as most of the houses in our journalist neighbourhood, joined the conspiracy life of Warsaw. […] According to my brother – the first one to appear in our house was Mrs. Niewiadomska [In Polish "nie wiadomo" means “no clue”]. Obviously it wasn’t her real name, we never got to know her real name. We don’t know, neither me, nor my brother, from whose recommendation a big fat gentleman from Lublin came to our house and asked if he could rent the room for her. We, the children, were told that it his fiancée. This gentleman told my father: “She has to leave Lublin, it’s a small city, everyone knows her…” My parents agreed to rent out father’s cabinet to Mrs. Stefania Niewiadomska. She didn’t have a “good look”.

In 1941 the flatmates from the children room moved out. We were saying goodbye to so dear and young people with a great regret. Children room was vacant and awaited new roommates. A young, slim lady with straight hairs came to rent it out. Blue-eyed, chestnut hair was tightly queued. She wanted to rent a room for her and another one in nearby for her husband. The location of our house was suitable for her. She saw the gardens, two exits, a path connecting all the gardens, used for taking out garbage and bringing coal and potatoes for winter – and she decided to stay. Borowscy moved to our house. When we saw Mr. Artur, even we, children realized that he is not an Aryan. Short, energetic, dark-eyed, with a characteristic shape of nose, his looks were definitely disadvantageous. Despite that, the parents decided to rent them out the room”.

Krystyna Zabłocka, Maiden Name Skarżyńska wrote in a letter to the Committee for Remembrance of Poles saving Jews (all the quotes come from this collection): “Lidia Parecka, born […] in Tarnopol was a third-generation Catholic, but for Germans she was Jewish. Gestapo was looking for her after death of her parents, and in spring 1942 she was forced to flee to Lwów [Lemberg]. Sacre Coeur Sisters, by whom she was brought up, sent her to Sisters Niepokalanki in Nowy Sącz, where I was learning. After a few day stay she was sent to my parents’ house – Jadwiga I Stanisława Skarżyńscy, where she lived until the end of the war. To justify her stay she was introduced as a cousin of Armenian descent from Lwów. She was registered in Czchów County, where she worked as a gardening intern. She lived in one room with us”.



Out of Christian mercy

In thousands of testimonies we find common facts. Firstly, afraid of being killed the saved ones moved from one place to another. The circle of people of good will was growing and enhanced the chances to save a Jew. Secondly, in the place when a certain person was hiding (e.g. a nun’s house or apartment house, a landlords’ manor or even a whole village) all the locals learnt about the hidden one sooner or later. The possibility of keeping the hidden one in secret from the neighbours was in many cases simply impossible or even detrimental – e.g. in the villages, where the locals trusted each other and solitarily stood together against the strangers.

In many testimonies comes back the story of a stay of a “cousin” from the city and then it is admitted that no body believed in this legend. Obviously, the less you know the better. Countryside population protecting Jews was afraid of both strangers, who could disclose the hiding place or the hidden Jew himself, who usually was unknown and nobody had seen him and created a potential risk to the community.

In Polish testimonies, a Christian sensitivity dominates. I haven’t found a single testimony in which priests or nuns would refuse to help a needy human being, if it was an injured soldier, a guerrilla fighter or a Jew. Christian mercy constituted a foundation, which appeared every time when there was a necessity to make a decision. It destroys therefore an unjust and stupid myth of Christianity as a religion supporting racist hitlerism in its indeed pagan extermination of Jews, Gypsies, handicapped, homosexuals and second-in-line Slav nations or “unsuitable” for III Reich project.

“I entered the hut, I closed the shutters and doors and laid down. It seems like I fell asleep well - which happens really rarely to me -, since the knocking on my door in the middle of the night seemed to me to be a dream. It’s a night and someone’s knocking on my door! Startled, I started looking for the light switch on the wall, because I thought that I’m in my flat in Bielsko and I can’t orientate where’s the door, the window or the lamp. I hear Slovak words saying “Len Pomalu, len pomalu”[slowly, slowly]… Finally the doors open, flashlights are twinkling, two men put in two heavy luggage cases, Dr. Rajec, our district’s medic from Frydman, pays them with a shaking hand. The doors close, we’re alone. He, carrying a child, his wife and I. Horrible! Dr. Kuechel from Stara Wieś was taken last night and murdered in Czorsztyn, now it’s their turn. They are Jews… The doctor says that they would rest for a minute and then they would go to the forest… All of us shiver. Mrs. Elżbieta is yellow like a lemon, the doctor is all shivering, little two-and-a-half year Ewa sleeps on his hands. I shake, shiver in fever. My jaws shut, I feel bitter and dry in my mouth. I can’t say a single word out of my throat. We are doomed! Those who are ordered to transport the Slovak Jews to the border can come here any minute. The seconds pass and we drown in lethal, really lethal fear.

Suddenly, a strange calmness comes back to my heart, colour to my face, some wave of love floods my heart, love to those people, so curbed by anxiety. Courage, yes! Courage strengthens my heart. Those people in one moment become the dearest ones to me in the whole world. So I tell them calmly “The Forest has its ends, the winter’s coming. You’ll stay with me”… I realized that it was a God talking through me, they calmed down too. Doctor laid down the child; Mrs Elżbieta started to vomit with bile… They stayed and were alive, the next day they opened the case and gave me a tin can with their money. I told them “there are potatoes in the cellar and that’s where you can keep your can safely. They didn’t realize how holy to me is their life, so as my own, that I've put in danger for them!” – wrote Mieczysława Farysiak from Dursztyn on the Polish-Slovak border.


Two memories

The story of Kowalski family and their neighbours is a typical account of rural family fortunes. Numerous offspring, great love and hard work, few words are spoken at the dinner table, there are however a lot of deeds and feelings.

As in the other places in Poland, Jews were hidden in the small Ciepielów. Till this day the last man who remembers those times tells the story of tragic days of December 1942 with tears in his eyes. It’s a living history, which thanks to Maciej Pawlicki and Artur Gołębiewski can become – and should be– present for all of us. This movie may play a changing role. Indeed the only thing nowadays that both Polish and Jewish sides share is an opinion that Jews are not liked by Poles (obviously it doesn’t mean certain individuals, but generally,as a nation), that they were strangers with their customs. Poles bear a grudge against Jews that they failed to show solidarity with Poles before the war and between 1939-1941. Nevertheless, those two memories bore a solid list of Polish “Righteous among Nations”, which played a role of the only valid and authentic account of Poles saving Jews. Today, thanks to historical researchers, as well as mutual, flourishing relations between Poland and Israel, the Jewish side realizes more and more that the list is not complete.

Therefore the Polish side tries to raise a monument to honour Poles saving Jews, hoping that in near future the Righteous’ list will come closer to the actual list of Poles helping Jews during the Second World War

The author is a historian, advisor to the director of IPN, a professor of UKSW